By the Numbers

1. Two people (Liz Barry and Philip Silva), affiliated with two organizations (the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science; Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources), working with a partnership consisting of two other organizations (the N.Y.C. Department of Parks & Recreation; the Design Trust for Public Space), are implementing Phase II, Goal 3, of a project having to do with urban agriculture in New York City. Goal 3 is as follows: “Measure the impact of urban agriculture in New York City.”

2. Silva is in his early thirties, taught urban forestry at the New School, is a first-year Ph.D. student, and has a map of New York Harbor tattooed on his upper arm. Barry, of similar age, is a 2007 recipient of an M.S. in architecture and urban design from Columbia University, owns a forty-foot-long telescoping carbon-graphite pole that she uses to take aerial photographs of urban gardens, and wore a striped T-shirt. Both are a hundred per cent into getting good data by ingenious and unconventional means. “From the start, we wanted no spreadsheets, no clipboards, no people standing with clickers at the garden entrances,” Barry said the other day.

3. A related study, done last year by Farming Concrete, a local research organization, found that in 2012 the hundred city gardens it studied grew food worth three hundred thousand dollars.

4. Barry and Silva have held three workshops with gardeners and farmers whose aggregate number may be represented by n, where n is greater than thirty and less than forty. If you divide n by the number of community gardens these people represent, add the average number of additional volunteers per garden, and multiply that by the number of gardens in the city—between five hundred and seven hundred—you get an awful lot of New York City gardeners. “Many hundreds of gardeners, probably more like thousands,” Silva said. “And each garden is different, each has its own creation myth, its own characters. We don’t want to overlook the intangibles.”

5. 1970 Grand Avenue is the address of the Leave It Better Kids’ Garden, in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. Barry and Silva went there at 5 p.m. on a recent Monday to see how the data collection was progressing. Waiting for them were Dominique Bouillon, who works for the Leave It Better Foundation, a group that teaches gardening in schools; Melinda Levano, age ten, who lives nearby; and Marquez Turner, also ten and from nearby. Melinda’s birthday is November 25th, making her two days older than Marquez, who happens to share a birthday with Barry. This numerological coincidence surprised everybody.

6. Melinda—dark hair, long ponytail—said she has worked in the garden “since I was little.” So has Marquez, who is quiet, slim, and quick. Melinda prefers to use the blue watering can, because blue is her favorite color. Marquez has no favorite color, but, if he did, he said it would be black. “These two are here every time I come,” said Bouillon, who created the garden in 2010. “They are very good workers.” As for the data: garlic is the garden’s No. 1 crop in neighborhood popularity. Weights and dimensions and quantity of produce harvested have been recorded, and will be totted up in the fall.

7. At the Clay Avenue Community Garden, in the Claremont section of the Bronx, a thirty-minute walk away, Ismael Ramos, Jr., who goes by Junior, is in charge. He also paints the cartoon figures on the adjoining walls. Hee Yang, a local building owner, who was born on a farm in Korea, told Barry and Silva that she grew many cucumbers in her plot this year. They had recently been weighed and counted. George Axiotakis, a gardener who knows everything about ornamentals—“But I’m just pedantic, I’m not domineering”—pointed out a favorite plant, devil’s trumpet, the psychotropic species that Carlos Castaneda ingested. No known city-sponsored study is currently attempting to quantify it.

8. Later, walking to the B train, Barry said, “Urban gardens in the city used to be fighting for their survival, but they’re more established now.” Silva: “Some gardens on the Lower East Side are forty years old.” Barry: “We hope our study will get gardeners to help each other and reach out of their own neighborhoods.” Silva: “There are chickens in urban gardens now!” Barry: “And beehives! They used to be illegal.”

9. Barry reached into the pocket of her jeans and took out a cucumber that Hee Yang had given her. She said, “Here’s one I guess we missed,” and bit into it with a crunch. ♦